may 18th

I have this tragic love story that ends in the way most tragedies do -- with death.  But, instead of a crazy suicide pact or homicidal rage, we mutually murdered our own love and friendship, chopped them up into itty bitty pieces and then scattered them all over the town  That was three years ago, but I can still hear the beating heart under the floorboards, in the walls, up in the attic; how much longer until that incessant pounding turns me into a crazed lunatic?  Its not so much that I can hear it still, I can learn to deal with the monotonous rhythm, its that nobody else seems to notice the sound at all.  There is one person in this whole world --in the whole universe -- who should be able to hear it, too because he was my partner in the crime, my right hand man in my murderous plot, the strong arm that squeezed the life out of all that we once held as sacred and then helped me bury the body.  He should hear it, too!  He should be banging on my door, begging me to turn it off, pleading with me to come up with another way to get rid of it all, to plan some better disposal method that will keep it buried and silent!  For all I know, he doesn't hear a peep, while it keeps bearing down on me, louder and louder and louder and louder until I'll tear my eardrums out of my ears to make it go away.  That beating heart only has me to torment, so it gives me everything its got, it spares nothing in its tortuous pumping because it believes that this is what I deserve most.  The one that plunged the knife deep into the chamber, over and over again, memories splashing all around like droplets of blood dotting the floor to be wiped away later to make it look as if nothing sinister had happened here, nothing some soap and water couldn't take care of -- that person deserves to hear it beating all day and all night all day and all night all day and all night.  You see, he only held the love down and kept it still; I did the actual killing.

Love treats me differently now.  It never lets me get too comfortable because it remembers what happened the last time and it will never be the weakling again. It reminds me that the people I have shared love with -- not familial love that is natural and easy to nurture, but the love that people work at to keep alive -- that love has never lasted for me.  Those people have found it easy to pack their love up and take it somewhere else, and with it went friendship and trust, like baby ducklings following their mother.  Love holds its intensity away from me now.  It doesn't allow me to feel it all, only a portion of it, and never enough to eliminate doubt and hurt and the sound of that past love, still beating, maybe even still gasping for breath, blood gurgling in the back of it's throat, knowing it will never, ever be saved, but it cannot seem to die peacefully, either.  Love lets the memories haunt me, lets me live them again and again in dreams that seem too real, that touch me too close to the wounds inflicted by the struggle, picking off the scab, showing me the infection I have no idea how to cure.

And all I want is for somebody else to hear it.  I want somebody else to see it.  I want somebody else to say, "Yes, I feel it with you, you are not the only one who faces the doubts, who dreams the dreams, who remembers the days when love and friendship were alive and well."  I want the beating to be less the pounding of a heart that broke and more the beating of a drum that marks each step toward forgiveness. To closure.